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Twitter bug exposed Android users’ protected tweets for five years

There’s a bit of concerning for any Android Twitter users who thought their private tweets were kept secure by the social media platform‘s protected feature.

The company confirmed in a blog post earlier this week that it discovered a bug that has plagued the platform since 2014. The issue was addressed earlier in the week with a fix on 14th January, but Twitter only disclosed its knowledge of the bug late yesterday.

As such it begs the question of whether they would have said anything if they did not get the fix to work.

As for the bug itself, it would occur if the account of an Android device user, if they decided to update some of their profile information, such as their email address. This then resulted in a disabling of the “Protect your Tweets” feature if it was previously enabled.

According to the company, this issue may have affected Android users if they chose to change their account details between 3rd November 2014 and 14th January 2019. With such a wide gap, it pretty much means every Android Twitter user should check their account to ensure all is in order.

In the interim Twitter says it has reached out to any users that may have been affected by this issue.

“We’ve informed people we know were affected by this issue and have turned “Protect your Tweets” back on for them if it was disabled. We are providing this broader notice through the Twitter Help Center since we can’t confirm every account that may have been impacted,” the Twitter blog post explained.

With Engadget also pointing out that Twitter is coming under fire for failing to fulfil a request from Ireland’s Data Protection Commission regarding information it collected via the platform’s link shortening service, it looks like 2019 isn’t getting off to a good start for the company.

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